Illuminate
by This Is Your Nightmare
Summary: you're my anomaly.


**Illuminate**

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><p>she lies beneath him, a fusion of glass and starlight born of a blind ghost in a waking world.<p>

he is fingertips and sticky-sweet treacle air and butterfly kisses tracing letters across her collarbone in a code that nobody knows.

together, they make infinity.

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><p>they pull each other apart with touch alone. silver air washes over them through the midnight window. it washes their bodies clean of all the words their lips have broken, every memory better left forgotten. it washes them clean of themselves.<p>

he runs his hands through her hair and their lips collide and his lungs don't feel like lungs anymore.

_you're my anomaly._

it's true. every moment that passes between draws him deeper into the hidden wonders of her mind, smoothing out corners there he'd never recognised as corners before, seismic waves and radiation crushing the barriers that had once provided shelter. she teaches him so much more about past and present and future than a ball of light with a core of crumpled time ever could.

she blushes and moves closer to him. _i feel like i should say something profound now, but i can't think of anything. except...except i love you. i love you._

the words are snatched from the air as they crush each pause for breath into the abstraction of desire.

they kiss and they kiss and they kiss.

the space in between is not a space but a color. the color of addiction. he is the one to let the end of the sentence punctuate the space between them. he has to, so he can remember how to trust himself to talk. _that's all i need. god, dylan, you're...you're everything to me. if you can say that and mean it then nothing else matters. i love you too._

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><p>they lie together, intertwined beneath the covers. clouds steal the moon from them, so they construct a new reality for themselves, founded on touch and taste and beating hearts. there is no stronger foundation for a universe so breathless.<p>

the silences are few and fleeting, razor edges and molten glass.

he talks about his fascination with light. sunshine and candles and the innocence of polished copper.

she talks about the darkness she feels, and how she longs to burn, because light is like a kaleidoscope, lush and rich and intricately complex, whereas darkness is nothing more than absence.

she has light. she will admit to her light. but her light, she says, is pathetic. a lit cigarette. a spark from a bonfire.

the word _pathetic _is steeped in self-disgust.

he holds her close, teeth clenched, and waits for her to finish.

meanwhile, she paints a thousand pictures with her words.

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><p>as it turns out, she isn't trying to show him one thousand pictures, but the thousands of aspects that exist in every picture.<p>

blood stains the fingertips of a teenage girl sitting cross-legged on the floor. the flick of a paintbrush tipped with shimmers brings the sky to its knees. silently, she envies the heat radiating outwards from the tip of the joint she holds using all the wrong fingers.

she tries to summon fire. it dissolves to embers, then ashes, then nothing at all.

she doesn't want embers. she doesn't want ashes. it's wildfire she seeks, explosive and uncertain, furiously colorful, a fire that could wound and kill and keep her safe from the world that has trampled over her heart too many times now.

she's sick of her own sensitivity, and the worthlessness of the glowing embers that define her.

she was not put on this planet to glow.

she was chosen for apocalyptic fire. one day, she will even consume oblivion.

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><p><em>fire is beautiful. <em>he whispers it like a treasure map, like a secret, trailing kisses along her forehead and down to her cheek. _but embers are beautiful, too. maybe even more so than fire. and you're beautiful as you are, darkness and all. embers need shadows to thrive. darkness isn't absence. darkness is courage. darkness is what's left when you take away the light._

_you're more beautiful, _she murmurs. _you look like light. light scattered across the ocean. you're scattered all over the place but your soul is the ocean and holds all the pieces together and it's beautiful._

_and you say you can't be profound, _he smiles, but her eyes are closed.

_sorry. sleepy._

_s'okay. _he rests his chin against her head, arms tight around her, each breath feeding her embers with the oxygen that gives them life. he protects her from falling into ashes. _goodnight, dylan. i love you._

_night, evan, _she mumbles, already half-asleep. _love you too._

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><p>they fall asleep together.<p>

scattered light and stolen embers.

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><p>this the design of the universe.<p>

this is infinity.

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><p><strong>Written for Kai.<strong>

**I don't know if you'll ever read this, but I want you to know that I'm sorry.**

**You can probably guess who I am.**

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><p><strong>I have a lot of restrictions on my laptop at the moment. This is the only site I'm able to access, meaning I can't get images and as such can't make a cover for this yet. I'm going to see my mum tomorrow, so I can use the computer at her house to do it. I'll upload the cover tomorrow, hopefully. If I forget, I'm really sorry and I'll sort it out ASAP.<strong>


End file.
